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Shakewell

Language and Terminology

Controlled Language

A deliberately restricted subset of a natural language, limiting vocabulary and grammar so meaning is consistent and machine-tractable.

Definition

What Controlled Language Means

Controlled language trades expressive range for predictability. The same idea is always written the same way, which reduces ambiguity for readers and variance for translators.

An unplanned beneficiary is machine reading. Content where one concept has one name and one sentence carries one instruction is content a retrieval system can ground on reliably, which was not the reason anyone adopted it.

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Beyond the Definition

Knowing what a term means is the easy half. If you need to know what it obligates on your program, that is the conversation we are built for.